Related papers: Photomechanical coupling in photoactive nematic el…
Vertically aligned mono-domain nematic liquid crystal elastomers contract when heated. If a temperature gradient is applied across the width of such a cantilever, inhomogeneous strain distribution leads to bending motion. We modelled the…
This dissertation presents a new coupled electro-mechanical model that is an improvement on the classical parallel-plate approximation. The model employs a hyperbolic function to account for the beam deformed shape and electrostatic field.…
In liquid-crystalline elastomers, the nematic order parameter and the induced strain vary smoothly across the isotropic-nematic transition, without the expected first-order discontinuity. To investigate this smooth variation, we measure the…
Anomalous relaxation is one of the hallmarks of disordered systems. Following perturbation by an external source, many glassy, jammed and amorphous systems relax as a stretched or compressed exponential as a function of time. However,…
We investigate Isotropic - Nematic transition in liquid crystal elastomers employing non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo techniques. We consider a lattice model of a liquid elastomer and Selinger-Jeon-Ratna Hamiltonian which accounts for…
Non-imaging optical lenses can shape the light intensity from incoherent sources to a desired target intensity profile, which is important for applications in lighting, solar light concentration, and optical beam shaping. Their surface…
Interaction of an electron system with a strong electromagnetic wave leads to rearrangement both the electron and vibrational energy spectra of a dissipative system. For instance, the optically coupled electron levels become split in the…
Only a few years have passed since discovery of polar nematics, and now they are becoming the most actively studied liquid crystal materials. Despite numerous breakthrough findings made recently, a theoretical systematization is still…
Nematic solids respond strongly to changes in ambient heat or light, significantly differently parallel and perpendicular to the director. This phenomenon is well characterized for uniform director fields, but not for defect textures. We…
Rapidly growing demands for fast information processing have launched a race for creating compact and highly efficient optical devices that can reliably transmit signals without losses. Recently discovered topological phases of light…
Competition between ordered phases, and their associated phase transitions, are significant in the study of strongly correlated systems. Here we examine one aspect, the nonequilibrium dynamics of a photoexcited Mott-Peierls system, using an…
We investigate the mechanics of bistable, hard-magnetic, elastic beams, combining experiments, finite element modeling (FEM), and a reduced-order theory. The beam is made of a hard magneto-rheological elastomer, comprising two segments with…
Light-matter interaction is one of the key routes to understanding and manipulating geometric and electronic behaviors of materials, especially two-dimensional materials which are optically accessible owing to their high surface to volume…
Liquid crystal elastomers represent a novel class of programmable shape-transforming materials whose shape change trajectory is encoded in the material's nematic director field. Using three-dimensional nonlinear finite element…
A body immersed in a nematic liquid crystal disturbs the fluid's preferred molecular configuration and increases its stored elastic energy. In an active nematic, the fluid components also generate a stress in the bulk fluid. By introducing…
Metasurfaces, and in particular those containing plasmonic-based metallic elements, constitute a particularly attractive set of materials. By means of modern nanolithographic fabrication techniques, flat, ultrathin optical elements may be…
An optical switch based on liquid-crystal tunable long-range metal stripe waveguides is proposed and theoretically investigated. A nematic liquid crystal layer placed between a vertical configuration consisting of two gold stripes is shown…
Mono-layers of stearic and behenic acids deposited with the Langmuir-Blodgett technique, were used as aligning films in nematic liquid crystal cells. During the filling process the liquid crystal adopts a deformed quasi-planar alignment…
The aim of this paper is to deal with multi-physics simulation of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) based on an advanced numerical methodology. MEMS are very small devices in which electric as well as mechanical and fluid phenomena…
Polarization flutter, produced by an applied AC electric field drives an equilibrium ferroelectric nematic ($\mathrm{N_F}$) liquid crystal (LC) through a transition into a dissipative active ferroelectric nematic state exhibiting strong…